Peace Poem by Mpimanyeto Mashimbye

This poem is about peace
It's not about sticks and stones used to break foreigners bones
It's not about passport stamps, social class or learning to speak in the right accent
It's not about learning to say "e ndololwane" before making your way to a taxi rank
And praying that you look Zulu enough

It's not about the rhetoric of political freedom and a donkey to carrot style of leadership
It's not about 250 million Rand compounds in distant homesteads
It's not about secret shebeens hidden in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg
With Brian Molefe fingering the country's main switch
And
Offering tutorials to the state captors on how to do it too

It's not even about 470 thousand lives lost in the heart of Syria during the war
For her soul
Or the lack of media coverage for 43 beheadings in the DRC
In the space of two weeks
Or the Somalian fork in the road to death by dehydration from drought
Or cholera from infested water sources

This poem is about peace
It's about waking up in the morning
Looking in the mirror
And not seeing two different people

It's about saying your own name
Without feeling as though you're calling out to a distant stranger
Who hardly remembers his own full names because he has had to shorten them
Over and over again just so white people can have an easier time pronouncing them
It's about forgetting you have a twitter account
Just long enough to remember that you were an individual before hashtag culture
And live tweeting award shows
It's about looking at your scars and stretch marks
And realising that they are the lines upon which to write the poetry and stories
Of your memories and experiences

It's about the realisation that inner peace is a prerequisite for world peace
It's about an identity crisis that has lasted over 400 years
It's about a superiority complex based on unfathomable feelings of inferiority

How dare we challenge you
How dare we protest and deface monuments of our own oppression
How dare we sing songs in the languages you tried to kill
By standardising your own
How dare we take our young children to restaurants to play in the pens
Where your children play
How dare we want the land back
How dare we want Helen Zille sacked
How dare we be black

This poem is about peace
But if you want to make it about war
We can make it about war